Post originally by Gerbil at 2003-10-22 22:14:39
Converted from Phorums BB System

It really does need to be reiterated that carping about a game being "metaplot-heavy" is a little bit misguided. You can take a game and strip away any element of its metaplot you like, if you think it will make a better game.

The two WW games I'm actively playing right now are Orpheus and Exalted (although I play just about all of them now and then.) For Exalted, I happen to like just about all of the setting material and metaplot, so I keep it in, and my players are constantly running into the signature characters and current events described in the sourcebooks.

For Orpheus, on the other hand, I don't particularly feel like using the metaplot provided with the game, and I don't feel the need to shell out for each book of the limited series... so I'm just ignoring both. In my Orpheus game, all the backstory (the way the conclusion of the Wraith metaplot ties into the beginning of the Orpheus metaplot) never happened. There was no Maelstrom, and there ARE ghosts older than three years kicking around. Simple as that. I also did a major hatchet job on the rules, rewriting the way Spite works, reassigning Horrors to different Shades, and cutting out large tracks of material that I think are stupid. And now I have a cool game that I'm very much satisfied with.

And by the way... people said it before, but what the hell. Saying Orpheus should have been released as a Wraith supplement is just silly. The Wraith line ended years ago, and Orpheus, in terms of rules, mood, theme, setting, everything, is a really, REALLY different game. Somebody said that it was a little bit like saying Werewolf should have been released as a Vampire supplement; that would perhaps be even more accurate if Vampire had been discontinued before Werewolf was ever published.